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22 Apr

Will Smith Turned Down Neo in The Matrix to Make the Worst Movie of His Career

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When it comes to the classics of cinema—and sometimes the dregs—it’s always fun to think about what might’ve been. Casting especially can be a strange alchemy between actor and role, and when the formula is off, it’s easy to ponder whether the spell would work at all. Can you imagine Robert Redford as Michael Corleone? What about Tom Selleck as Indiana Jones? And it’s an interesting challenge to envision what Tim Burton’s Batman might’ve been if it starred Bill Murray versus Robin Williams. The casting of Neo in The Matrix is another legendary “what if?” in movie history. The 1999…

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22 Apr

Can You Defeat Our Fiendishly Hard Universal Monster Movie Quiz?

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Monsters are everywhere! Godzilla and Kong are going at it once again (this time as a double act) and now Abigail has hit screens, a movie about a heist gone wrong where the loot is an adorable 12-year-old ballerina. Starring Dan Stevens, Melissa Barrera and Kathryn Newton and directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett aka Radio Silence, who made the raucous Ready Or Not (as well as the most recent Scream movies), it’s a gore-soaked genre love letter that at one point had ties to the Universal Monsters canon. Without Abigail spoilers, that’s not entirely evident in the finished…

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22 Apr

Deadpool & Wolverine Trailer Breakdown: Cassandra Nova, Lady Deathstrike, Alioth, LFG

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Wolverine is the best at what he does. And what he does is self-loathing and swear words. At least, that’s what we see in the latest trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine, courtesy of a returning Hugh Jackman seemingly as the only surviving X-Man from his universe. The third Deadpool movie has long promised to be an R-rated reunion for 20th Century Fox mutants and a way to bring the X-Men into the MCU, so far the teasers are delivering just that. The first trailer was a cameo-fest full of Deadpool‘s supporting cast and other Fox characters, as well as a…

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20 Apr

The Best Movie Trilogies Ranked

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The best things come in threes, especially stories. In Western nations, we like a three-act structure in which we set a status quo, watch our heroes fall, and then see them return to greatness. Some of these stories cannot be held within a single movie. For those epics, those monumental narratives, the movie trilogy was born. Trilogies represent some of the best that cinema has to offer, movies that changed the culture and the art form. The trilogy might vary in quality from film to film, but together these three films tell a story that cannot be ignored. Before we…

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20 Apr

Rebel Moon 2 Ending: Zack Snyder Explains the Big Deaths and Part 3 Cliffhanger

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This Rebel Moon article contains spoilers. Like Star Wars before it, and Dune earlier this year, Zack Snyder‘s two-part space epic Rebel Moon ends with the defeat of an evil Empire. At least a temporary one. While Kora (Sofia Boutella) and the rest of the heroes have defended the moon of Veldt from Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein) and his dreadnought, the Imperium still stands, presumably ready to strike back in a future movie. Balisarius (Fra Fee) is still emperor and Kora still has unfinished business with her treacherous father figure. And in Part 2: The Scargiver, we also learn Princess…

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19 Apr

Alien TV Series Timeline Sets the Show Pretty Close to a Divisive Ridley Scott Movie

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At its core, the Alien franchise is easy to understand: people meet aliens, bad things happen. It’s a lot harder to keep track of when exactly these things occur. Alien takes place in 2122, Aliens 57 years later, and then Alien 3 happens shortly afterwards. But then things get weird. Alien Resurrection jumps ahead 202 years, Prometheus begins sometime in prehistory and then in 2093, and Alien: Covenant is in 2104. Alien: Romulus will squeeze in between the first two movies, around 2142, which is 20 years after the original. And that’s not even going through the Alien vs Predator…

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19 Apr

Zack Snyder Reveals the Valuable Lesson He Learned From Making Dawn of the Dead

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It was an initially groan-inducing idea 20 years ago: a remake of George A. Romero‘s 1978 zombie classic Dawn of the Dead. That film was arguably the Romero’s masterpiece, a biting satire about American consumerism that still feels relevant today. But the Zack Snyder version that followed turned out to be much more worthy of the Dawn name than anyone expected from a director making his feature film debut. More of a reimagining than a traditional remake, 2004’s Dawn of the Dead was a gorier, balls-to-the-wall action flick featuring zombies that didn’t just shamble down the post-apocalyptic street but sprinted…

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19 Apr

QUIZ: Guess the 1984 Movie from the Quote

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How is it forty years since 1984?? Well, that’s just how time works, my friends. It was a time before mobile phones. Before the internet. Before we got worried about and then forgot about Y2K. It was the year in which George Orwell envisioned a world of doublethink, room 101 and Big Brother. And it was several years before Room 101 and Big Brother would come to mean TV shows and not dystopian ideals. But we digress… Fortunately, the very nature of films is that the passing of time does not erode the quality of a classic movie, and even…

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19 Apr

The TV and Movie Line Readings We Can’t Get Out of Our Heads

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A lot goes into a good performance – from research to blocking to facial expressions and beyond. But at its core, an acting performance comes down to reading lines of dialogue on a piece of paper. Many actors do their level best to read the lines as written. Some other actors, bless them, like to get a little more creative. Television and film are filled with fascinating line readings from actors. Whether it’s an emphasis on an unusual syllable or just an outright scream, certain performers are able to make dialogue feel particularly vibrant. As pop culture travelers ourselves, we’ve…

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19 Apr

The Many Quentin Tarantino Movies That Never Got Made

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Quentin Tarantino loves film. Few filmmakers can boast such a wide knowledge of movies, especially the B-films and grindhouse works that have inspired his greatest cinematic accomplishments. Tarantino also loves to talk about future projects. Put those two passions together and you get a guy who often teases movies he never actually ends up making. Of course, it’s not always talk. Many of his best movies, including Kill Bill and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood started as ideas that he blabbed about to anyone who would listen. But while that approach builds excitement, it also sets up fans for…

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19 Apr

How The Movie Poltergeist Inspired Mad Men … Yes, Really

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AMC drama Mad Men is one of the best TV series of its era – or any other for that matter. The seven season-long saga of 1960s Madison Avenue advertising executive Don Draper (Jon Hamm) has rightfully taken its place among the classics in the TV canon. In addition to its greatness, however, another thing that Mad Men should be remembered for is its bizarre commitment to secrecy. Mad Men was one of the most spoiler-phobic TV shows ever. Showrunner Matthew Weiner insisted that AMC’s promos for the drama reveal next-to-nothing about upcoming plots. A typical “on the next episode…

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19 Apr

RoboCop Is Secretly Paul Verhoeven’s Perfect Jesus Movie

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RoboCop became both a blockbuster and a controversial critical darling upon its release in 1987 due to a mix of jet black humor and as subtle as a jackhammer social commentary sticking a perfect landing. Its success was a surprise to an industry that had looked at Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner’s original script with its simplistic one-word comic book title and assumed it was fated to be a high-concept stinker. The 2023 RoboDoc documentary miniseries does a terrific job of chronicling the effort it took to turn RoboCop into both a box office win and an enduring cult masterpiece…

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19 Apr

Army of the Dead 2 Update Is Disappointing News for Zack Snyder Fans

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Zack Snyder made his name with his gruesome, much more action-y remake of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead in 2004. The director then tried to line up an even bigger sequel called Army of the Dead for years, but there were many detours along the way, including his eventual role as the chief architect of the early DCEU. He finally returned to his long-lost zombie sequel in 2021, this time as the launching point of a whole new cinematic universe for Netflix, which also included a crime thriller prequel called Army of Thieves and even an animated series…

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18 Apr

Her and Blade Runner 2049’s Dystopias Get Closer Thanks to New ‘A.I. Girlfriends’ Market

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Over the past several days, a new viral story spread around social media when (thanks to a New York Post write-up), the juxtaposition of the terms “A.I.” and “girlfriend” became a chilling promise of things to come. That’s at least one way to interpret Late Checkout CEO Greg Isenberg’s prediction that the next growth industry for artificial intelligence is “dating.” In a social media post on X, which is the platform formerly known as Twitter, Isenberg recounted how he met a 24-year-old “single guy” who told him he spends $10,000 a month on “AI girlfriends.” The anonymous man even described…

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18 Apr

Transformers One Trailer Takes the Optimus Prime Origin Story in a Bizarre Direction

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The long-awaited trailer for Transformers One has finally been released and it… was not what anyone was expecting. Early details first confirmed in April 2020 revealed the film would be a fully animated prequel. Set on the home planet of the Transformers, Cybertron, the film takes place several years before the main story that’s been adapted so many times in both live action and animation, and focuses on the early relationship between Autobot leader Optimus Prime and Decepticon leader Megatron. The implication of that premise was that we’d finally receive key context as to the motivation behind the two most…

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18 Apr

Rebel Moon Recap and When Part 2 Comes Out on Netflix

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This Rebel Moon article contains spoilers. Love him or hate him, you cannot deny Zack Snyder garners more attention than most filmmakers working today. It’s no surprise that his fans have been champing at the bit to see his the second part of his dark sci-fi epic, which it titled Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver. Snyder debuted Rebel Moon Part One: A Child of Light in December. That film introduced viewers to a futuristic science fiction world, drawing from beloved tropes about scrappy rebels, mysterious prophecies, and a totalitarian empire. The movie pulls ideas from Star Wars, the samurai…

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18 Apr

Dune 3: The Many Challenges of Adapting Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah

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This article contains possible spoilers for Dune: Part Three and Dune Messiah. When Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune: Part One opened in 2021, it only took Warner Bros. six days to announce the sequel. However, when Dune: Part Two opened this past March 1—despite doing huge business and clearly paving the way for a third chapter—it took the studio over a month to confirm a film of Dune Messiah was in development. Why the delay? Well, lots of possible reasons, actually.  Even though Dune: Part Two is likely to soon cross the $700 million mark at the global box office, it was…

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16 Apr

What Modern Star Wars Needs to Learn From Star Trek

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Way back in 2002, the excitement for Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones diminished somewhat. Late Night with Conan O’Brien sent Triumph the Insult Comic Dog to mock the fans lined up for the premiere, resulting in a segment in which comedian/puppeteer Robert Smigel launched nerd jokes at the assembly. Most of the jokes were pretty obvious, including the last bit, in which a man cosplaying as Mr. Spock gained the knack for cursing and walked up and down the line with his middle finger extended. But while the perceived Star Wars vs. Star Trek rivalry has become…

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16 Apr

Tolkien’s Real-Life Love Story Inspired One of Middle-earth’s Most Famous Tales

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J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth mythology includes several epic and powerful love stories. Aragorn and Arwen are probably the best known thanks to the Lord of the Rings films, plus Sam and Rosie get married at the end, and the extended editions also feature Éowyn and Faramir’s relationship, though that one was a bit rushed even in the books. But book fans also know the stories of Tuor and Idril, Elwing and Eärendil, and the rather more tragic story of Aegnor and Andreth, among others. The love story that meant the most to Tolkien himself, though, was the story of Beren and…

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16 Apr

Spider-Man 3 Was Originally Going to See Tobey Maguire Breakdancing

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There is a lot that can be and has been said about the dance scenes in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3. Little of it has been positive in the 17(!) years since the movie’s release. Undeniably leaning into the director’s goofier comic sensibility, the film twice detours from its dour tone—which begins when Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) dons the bad juju vibes of an alien symbiote—in order to have a laugh-out-loud dance break. In one sequence near the end of the second act, and after Peter has permanently scarred and attempted to kill his BFF (James Franco), Maguire’s protagonist struts down…

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